Washington's new blueprint for dealing with dangerous waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation tops 16,000 pages, covering the maze of polluted land and water at the former nuclear weapons production site.

But Hanford activists say it leaves crucial issues unaddressed; namely, imports of new radioactive waste and the ultimate cleanup plan for leaking storage tanks and much of 43 miles of contaminated ditches.

The department wants to bury and cap most of the contamination instead of removing it, they say, and to bring more nuclear waste to Hanford. The state permit does nothing to stop that, said Gerry Pollet, executive director of the Hanford watchdog group.

"They're saying, 'We're going to give you a permit even though this is a non-compliant facility and there's no closure plan,'" Pollet said. "The public doesn't have anything to look at."

Ecology spokesman Dieter Bohrmann said the permit requires the federal government to apply for a permit modification if it wants to bring in more waste, which would include public input and an analysis of the potential impact on groundwater.

The state will also monitor waste and review closure plans in coming years to make sure they meet state law, he said.

"We're talking about decisions that are years down the road," Bohrmann said. "We feel comfortable reissuing the draft permit now realizing that we're going to continue to look at all our options."

The permit also addresses "numerous" large boxes of dangerous and mixed waste now stored improperly outdoors in Hanford's "Central Waste Complex." It requires weather protection for the waste and daily inspections to look for leaking or deteriorating containers.

Hanford sits along the Columbia River near Richland, Wash. It opened in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and ran nine nuclear reactors during the Cold War years to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Ecology says it doesn't have the legal authority to preempt federal law and regulate purely radioactive wastes, including their import to Hanford. But it can regulate radioactive wastes mixed with other wastes.

The permit update, scheduled for approval in February, is the first since the permit was issued in 1994. It covers 37 separate contaminated "units" on the 586-square mile site.